


Small Monsters

by rexluscus



Category: Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus/pseuds/rexluscus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York, 1967. Dan finds out why Rorschach does it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Monsters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ayien](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Ayien).



> Many thanks to Amanuensis1 for helping me get this thing in shape. Thanks as well to Ayien for the prompt and to the fine organizers of Yuletide 2008.

Dan cringed as he peered through the owl-scope. "Jesus, this is so—did you ever imagine yourself doing shit like this when you first started?"

Rorschach made a soft noise of contempt. "Hoping for something more glamorous?" They were crouched side by too-close side on a rusty fire escape, and every time one of them moved, the whole contraption whined ominously. Rorschach thrust his hand into Dan's line of sight. "Give me those."

Dan sighed and handed over the owl-scope. He'd never told anybody, but it was just a pair of military binoculars with some meaningless extra lines added to the reticules. "Dunno what you're going to see—it's just a guy knocking his wife around." He curled his lip. "Ugh...it's all just so— _venal_."

"This job isn't just shootouts and car chases, Daniel," Rorschach said, the owl-scope pressed to where his eyes presumably were. Dan wondered for at least the hundredth time how the hell he saw through that mask. "About time you learned—ah. There it is."

"What?" Dan jostled Rorschach's arm and the fire escape creaked threateningly again.

"White powder. Bags and bags of it." Rorschach leaned forward a little, and his mask gave the impression that he was squinting. "It's in the oven."

"Maybe he's smacking his old lady around because she tried to heat up his pork chop in there," said Dan.

"In my experience," said Rorschach, handing the owl-scope back over, "men like that don't need excuses to hit a woman." He rose to his feet and the fire escape swayed with a forlorn moan.

"Let's go in," said Dan. "I'm sick of watching this sad shit."

It was laughably easy. Either of them alone could have done it. Hell, they could've just phoned it in to the local precinct and gone home. But it had been a slow night, and Rorschach didn't believe in clocking out early, so in they went.

Actually, Dan reflected as they shouldered past the door now dangling from broken hinges, it might have been easier with just one of them. In small spaces, two men just meant twice as much surface area for a bullet, and one of them would inevitably be in the way. Of course, he knew exactly which one of them Rorschach would think was in the way. Rorschach made straight for the kitchen, and the suspect was on his face on the peeling linoleum floor with his arm a half-inch from broken by the time Dan caught up.

"Call the cops." Rorschach didn't look up as he snapped the cuff to a kitchen table leg. "Phone's over there."

"Yes, dear," Dan muttered, casting a glance at the silent woman by the stove. "Hey, what about her?"

"Detain her, too. The police will want to question her even if she's not involved. Just make the call; this has taken too much time already."

Dan swore under his breath and picked up the phone.

By the time he'd finished speaking with the sergeant, Rorschach had maneuvered the woman into a chair and was fastening the cuff around her wrist. Dan hung up the phone. "They'll be here in fifteen to get these fine citizens out of our hair."

"Closet," the woman said suddenly, rousing from her blank docility and rattling the cuffs.

"Huh?" Dan came around the table. "What, are there more drugs in there?"

"There's no more goddamn drugs," snarled the man from the floor. "Don't listen to her."

"Front," the woman insisted. "In the front. By the door."

"I'll go investigate," said Rorschach, striding past. "Daniel, stay and watch these two."

Dan sighed. He pulled a chair out from the table and flopped down.

Less than a minute later, Rorschach's footfalls came storming back up the hall. Dan wasn't sure what could be so exciting about more drugs; maybe Rorschach was just happy to find evidence of even more evil.

A chill washed down his back as his partner burst into the kitchen towing a small child by the wrist.

Rorschach stopped in front of the woman. The child looked too shocked to make a sound, and the disconcerting smell of stale urine filled the room.

"What is this?" Rorschach hissed. "What the  _hell_  is this?" It was the first time Dan had ever heard Rorschach swear; he'd always half-suspected the guy was some kind of church nut. 

The woman stared in horror at Rorschach's featureless face and didn't say a word.

"What is a  _kid_  doing in a locked  _closet?_ " Rorschach had leaned in close to menace her. "Well?" he shouted, startling both the woman and Dan, who could count the number of times he'd heard Rorschach raise his voice on one hand. "What was he doing there, you  _bitch?_ "

"Hey! Jesus!" Dan stepped forward. "This guy on the floor here might have had something to do with it, too, you know."

" _Mothers_ ," Rorschach snarled, turning on Dan, "should protect their children! What kind of  _mother_  leaves her child in a  _closet?_ "

"One that gets smacked around, maybe?" Dan leaned down and tried to pry Rorschach's fingers off the tiny wrist. "Calm down, man, you're scaring the kid."

Rorschach released the child like he'd been burned and seized the woman by the hair. 

"Whoa!" Dan shouted and lunged forward again, but Rorschach had already dragged her out the kitchen door, the chair squealing along horribly behind her. She had broken her silence and begun to scream—long, ringing shrieks as though she were being gutted. Cursing softly, Dan left the child sitting like a propped-up toy and dashed after them. 

Rorschach, the woman and the chair were moving down the hall together, making a terrible clattering commotion. "Perhaps I'll lock you in a closet," he was informing her, his voice now empty of heat or inflection. "The police will come and go, and no one will help you because they'll never know you're there. Every hour will feel like a year, just you and the dark and the smell of your own piss—"

"That's enough!" Dan reached out to divide Rorschach's hand from the woman's head, but Rorschach spun around and struck him in the solar plexus before he could react, and he stumbled and fell back. Rorschach was now forcing both woman and chair into the closet beside the front door, growling like a cornered raccoon while the woman shrieked and shrieked without pause. 

Dan scrambled to his feet. "Rorschach, man, keep your shirt on!" He reached around the blow aimed at his gut this time and caught his snarling partner by the shoulder. It had never occurred to him that the light polymer armor of his suit would be protecting him from somebody on his side. Several of the neighbors had drifted out into the hallway and were looking in past the busted door. "Go back inside," Dan snapped at them over his shoulder. "The cops are on their way." None of them moved. He realized they probably thought the cops would be coming for Rorschach, not the drug-pusher on his face in the kitchen, who was just another noisy wife-beater as far as they knew.

Of the two of them, Rorschach was the scarier from a distance, but up close, Dan had four inches and at least thirty pounds on him. Dan was a nice guy, but he had put in as many hours at the gym as the next costumed hero, and he had had enough. He wrapped both arms around Rorschach's shoulders from the back and pulled, lifting the kicking, squirming, twisting bundle of rage away from the woman and clean off his feet. He ducked to the side to avoid a vicious head butt, and thanked his technical ingenuity again for the armor that was currently protecting his shins from serious damage. "Come on, pardner," he sighed, moving awkwardly toward the door. "Let's get out of here before the cops show up with the men in the white suits."

Rorschach went rigid and still at those words. Dan continued to hold onto him tightly in case he was only playing dead, dragging him toward the stairwell and hefting him down the steps one by one with an audible "oof." The guy was lighter than he was, but still at least one-forty. 

By the time they made it to the lobby, Rorschach had gotten control of himself. At the door, Dan let him go and watched him stagger hastily out into the alley by the garbage cans, tear his mask off, and heave his guts up onto the pavement in one horrible, gurgling retch.

"Jesus." He stared at Rorschach bent over double, panting and spitting and hacking as he caught his breath. After an interminable minute, he pulled up straight and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve with a long wet sniff, then sagged on top of a garbage can. His mask was still balled up in his fist. Dan approached him warily.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

Of course he was. "Uh, you know, it's really not any of my business, but maybe for the future you can let me know if something like that might happen so I can be ready for it?"

"Won't happen again."

Of course it wouldn't. "You know, just to be prepared—"

"Forget about it, Daniel. I said it won't happen again and it won't—happen—again."

Rorschach turned to him and met his gaze with wide, watery eyes. Wow, Dan thought—so this was what Rorschach looked like. If only they all knew. This was who every hood, thug and hustler from Dyckman to Wall Street was afraid of. He looked like the cashier kid at the hardware store. Homely, gawky, probably shy as hell with girls, unable to get a date to save his life; shit, even his own mother probably thought he was a joke—

That was it. This was why Rorschach did it—dressed up, did the dance, flew around with Dan in a goofy airship shaped like a bird. It wasn't for the gadgets and the cloak-and-dagger games Dan was in it for. This was a runty little kid who'd had the crap kicked out of him by all and sundry, then grown up into an angry little man who beat up criminals every night because the people he really wanted to hit were out of reach. This was all personal for him—personal and dirty and ugly and not about being a hero at all. 

Dan wasn't sure if that made him respect Rorschach less or more. It was honest, in a way. There was no self-congratulatory altruism—none of that "keeping the streets safe for honest citizens" horseshit the Minutemen were always spewing in  _Time_  that Dan had bought hook, line and sinker. There was just getting hit and hitting back.

"Come on, buddy." Dan walked over to the garbage can and hauled an unresisting Rorschach to his feet. "Let's go home."

"Don't think I'll go home," Rorschach said shakily. "Think I'll walk around for a while."

"Then you're coming home with me and sleeping on my couch. I'm not waking up in the morning to hear you're down in the morgue after taking on a whole gang with your bare hands or something."

Unbelievably, Rorschach listened to him for once and went along, too shattered to argue. Dan turned them toward the Upper West Side. It was going to be awkward at the breakfast table in the morning.


End file.
